Reflections before season 3
Infinity Kingdom is about to begin its’ third season of Illusion Battle Prime League. I am very excited to get back to Prime League and battle it out with all of you IK-heads for supremacy!
Atleast for the first stage of Prime Leage there seems to be nothing new to the format or content, as with the other seasons I expect there to be new builds taking to the top of the list. Looking over the builds from season 1 and up to end of season 2 there was so much progress and meta changes underway – it makes me very excited to once again try and bring some new build variations to the playing field.
It is important for me to state right up front here, that this is NOT a guide on the ‘best builds of Prime League’. I do not have any concrete builds to share with you all at this stage, simply because I am certain that no player is able to fire that out yet. As with ALL Prime League seasons, season 3 will have it’s own meta and in it new better builds than anything we have seen before will emerge.
If you are looking for plug-and-play builds, I refer you to the builds I have posted on the IK-wiki website for previous seasons. While the meta is constantly changing and some changes will be required to match the top of the top in season three, these are all still viable and competitive.
Instead, what I will try and do for this article is to take you on a little journey of my mind. I will try to explain my reasoning and thoughts about the previous seasons and how these makes me reflect on build creation for the coming season. It is my hope that some of my ramblings will spark ideas that lead to you who is reading this to coming up with brilliant builds on your own with which you will beat me back to Norheim!
Anyway, this will be a little journey with me into some reflections on what worked well in previous seasons as well as daring a few cautious predictions for what I think will be powerful in the battles to come. These are not complete builds, but more concept ideas that I found interesting during the previous seasons.
- Fire is king?
Fire will most likely remain king. The damage of the fire dragon is simply so high and the burst potential of the fire team so solid that I do foresee this remaining if not the best then at the very least HIGHLY competitive throughout the entire season.
Khan and Charles variations have dominated in previous seasons. Though we saw them drop off towards the end of season two, as players filled out their Tower of Knowledge skills the impact of Charles and Khan both dropped significantly. However, I would make a safe bet and say that a fire-khan march will do you very well especially in the initial rounds of IB Prime season 3.
- Wind turned meeeh
Wind began as the go-to march for most players during season 1 of IB Prime League due to its inherent superior attribute stats and dragon stats. However, with the insane burst potential of fire and fire being the literal counter element to wind, it’s effectiveness very quickly dropped off the map as players made strong fire builds. I expect wind to be one of the weakest setups as most players at this point know how powerful fire is.
- Lightning – sturdy fire wannabies
Lightning was dismissed by many, but there was a few who was able to create and use incredible lightning setups playing on lining up stun with dragon breath for massive damage as well as relying on the very high AOE burst damage of Khan to quickly match the damage burst of a fire team. Moreover, seen as many players tend to run earth or earth-wind variants the lightning with khan setup can have quite amazing effects. I think many underestimate the power that lies within lightning if used and setup correctly. I am very keen to see what players smarter than me will figure out using lightning.
- Water – The underdog that bites
While water is almost instantly dismissed by a huge number of players as the ‘weak’ element of Infinity Kingdom, there is quite a fair bit of potential within the realm of water Immortals. Especially Merlin with his crazy damage output can snuff out the flames of fire marches quite quickly. The biggest problem with water is the water dragon – having slow sustain in a low-troop pump-n-dump game like IB Prime, just doesn’t really match. However, the elemental buffs are not that big of a deal meaning you can run a powerful water setup with a fire dragon quite effectively. In season 2 I saw multiple examples of Cleo-Merlin and Mathilda-Merlin having good effect in the otherwise dominating fire meta – however this wont work well untill the playoffs atleast.
- What will I run to begin with?
If you study battle reports, I am sure you can identify builds just as powerful and probably even more powerful than anything I can think up. I take a lot of inspiration from admirable enemies that manage to beat what I consider strong builds.
True to form, I do not expect to have the new best builds ready and able by round one – there are a lot of brainy players in the Infinity Kingdom community, and I always expect someone else to be able to outwit my own creativity. As such, I will use the first rounds to test out various builds and some crazy compositions to see what works – most of it I expect will be outright terrible – but in the end I think that is the way you should also think about it. Try and make the best builds you can, but always have three radically different approaches and strategies behind the marches you have in your first, second and third formation group.
I will be trying out: Fire Cleo in formations one + Lightning/water hybrid in formations two + Fire Merlin in formations three.
Anyway, I hope that you enjoyed this little visit in my mind. This is how I am going to be approaching build creation for Prime League. If you want to talk concrete results with me, you can find me on the IK-wiki discord.
Published: 04-05-2023